About

I grew up an only child in the beautiful Finger Lakes area of NY where our family attended a mainline Protestant church. During the Vietnam War era, I became a conscientious objector. While serving my two years of alternative service at the graduate library at Cornell University, I became immersed in the prevailing drug subculture and fascinated with Eastern religions. That fascination led me to travel overland from Germany to India in 1970. While in India, I had contact with a national Indian Christian evangelist, a U.S. missionary couple and a Zen Buddhist monk from Japan. I plunged into an intense Zen meditation program in Budh Gaya, a town sacred to Buddhists worldwide. A part of my traveling religious library was a Bible which I read from time to time. One day the exclusive claim of Jesus Christ to be the only way to God arrested me. For, I reasoned, if the claims of Buddha were true I had infinite lifetimes to get it right. If, however, the claims of Christ were true, only one! It was time to investigate.

I had learned of a Christian community in the Swiss Alps that had attracted many hippie seekers like myself — L’Abri Fellowship, run by Fran and Edith Schaeffer. There I became convinced of the truth claims of the Bible and also witnessed a community of believers living out their faith. I placed my faith in Jesus Christ in 1971. I was doubly blessed at L’Abri, meeting and marrying the love of my life, Margaret.

Some time after we returned to the US, I sensed God’s call to full time ministry. Following graduation from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1979, I pastored for 14 years near Boston, where our two children were born. From 1993-1995, Margaret and I (with our children) served as missionaries in Cameroon, West Africa, where I taught at Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary. On returning to the U.S., I worked through Christ Memorial to establish campus ministries at the University of Vermont and Champlain College. In 1998, I began serving as associate pastor of Christ Memorial Church, where I remained until launching Redeeming Grace Church in 2005.

Following retirement in December 2013, we moved to Ridgeland, MS, where our daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren live. Our son, our daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren live in Chicago. Here in MS, we have become members of Harvest Church. We are remaining open to how God might have us serve as long as He grants us strength of body and mind.